I daren’t look up, because I’m on the brink of tears. That really isn’t what I meant at all. ‘Harri, I just thought it was fun, and that anyone who knew it would love it, and that anyone who didn’t would get the meaning…’

She flashes a palm, stopping me mid-sentence. ‘It just isn’t sexy. It’s long, it’s laboured. It starts off like reportage, but it just turns into this rambling mess. I mean, most of the piece is about some girl having a fight with her boyfriend. How is that sexy?’

Sticky, creeping tendrils of shame shoot up from my churning bowels, down from my burning cheeks, and meet in the middle to flood my whole body with poison. I’m crying now. I look to the right, all the way down the office to my desk. Louise meets my eyes and mimes a hug. Her sweetness wilts the scrap of steel that was holding back most of my tears. I won’t let Harri see that she’s made me cry, but I can’t shake the sob from my voice.

‘Would. You. Like me to. Rewriiiiiiiiiite—it?’

Harri sighs so forcefully that it probably counts as cardio. ‘Yeah. Cut that Carlotta stuff right down, just keep the kiss and that thing with the couple at the end. Could you make it a bit sexier? It just all sounds so negative, right now. It needs to sell the orgy more. You were supposed to be excited about this! It isn’t very aspirational, and that’s what The Girl likes, remember? She’s confident. She’s glamorous. You come across as being about as confident as day old wet toast, here.’

I’m so lit up with indignation that it takes me a moment to work out what Harri might mean by ‘selling the orgy more’.

‘You want me to make it up?’ I’m incredulous.

For the first time in our conversation, Harri looks up and makes proper eye contact with me. She does not look as defensive as I think she should. ‘No, no, absolutely not! Not exactly. Just…this is about creative licence. Use the facts of the experience, but also, configure them with what you think The Girl really wants to read. You have a following—we have a following—because you write sex so well. There’s no desire here, in your piece. That bit about kissing Carlotta, that was good. And maybe—no one wants to read about the Princess Bride man, but you could sort of recast it, a bit. There must have been some hot guys you could write about?’

I’m speechless. And because I don’t say no, she assumes it’s a yes from me. The rules of the orgy make it clear that consent must be explicit; it turns out that when you’re writing about the orgy, anything bloody goes.